Political predictions for 2017

The road ahead: how will the decisions of 2016 affect the next 12 months?Credit:
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29 December 2016 • 12:30pm

Following a turbulent 2016, the Telegraph's political commentators voice their predictions for 2017, from Brexit and elections in Europe to the Donald Trump presidency, Russia and the Middle East.

Let's be clear on policy for Brexit and climate change

By Nigel Lawson, Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Conservative member of the House of Lords and Chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation

No crystal ball is needed to predict the dominant political stories of 2017. For the UK it will be about Brexit: the triggering of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty at the end of March to enable the UK to leave the European Union, the response of the EU and the subsequent discussions. For the wider world it will be all about the first year of the Trump presidency in the US.

So far as Brexit is concerned, I would expect the British position to be clear. We will offer a free trade agreement with the EU with no strings attached. By ‘no strings’ I mean, pre-eminently, the restoration of unfettered UK control of our own borders (although EU citizens already resident in the UK would have the equally unfettered right to remain), the cessation of UK contributions to the EU Budget, and the end of the supremacy of European law and the European Court of Justice over UK law and the UK courts.

Although this would be overwhelmingly in the interests of EU businesses, and thus the faltering EU economy, which sell far more to us than we do to them, I expect this proposal to be rejected. The European Union is a political, not an economic, project. Europe’s leaders – and above all the Eurocracy - are scared stiff that, were they to accept this proposal, other member states would demand the same, and the entire European project would start to unravel.

What will increasingly be clear during the course of 2017 is that we will have to fall back to the second best option: trading with the EU on WTO terms.

That is no disaster. Our trade with vast majority of the rest of the world is on WTO terms, and we do far more trade with the rest of the world than we do with the rest of the EU. And our trade with the rest of the world has for some time been growing faster than our trade with the EU. The question is not whether we will have ‘access’ to the so-called single market: everybody does. The question is what the terms of access will be. WTO terms are perfectly acceptable.

As all this becomes apparent, I expect the debate over the course of 2017 to shift increasingly to the much more important Brexit issue of how we will conduct ourselves once we have regained our freedom of action. In particular, of the vast corpus of EU legislation and regulation which at present we are obliged to have as part of UK law, which do we wish to repeal or amend? Once we regain control of our borders, precisely what should our immigration policy be? And, free from the EU Common Agriculture Policy, what should our farming policy be?

As to this last, there is a read-across to trade policy. It is little short of a scandal that, in order to protect European farmers, EU tariffs on food imports from the developing world are three times as high as on manufactures. We should take the opportunity to slash these, which would mean both cheaper food and greater help to the developing world - unlike official development aid which, as Nobel-prize-winning economist Professor Angus Deaton has found, does more harm than good.

With Mr Trump leading the world in a more rational direction, the UK might come to its senses on climate policy

As to President-elect Trump, prediction is harder, since he revels in being unpredictable. But while there is much cause for concern, one positive change stands out. On climate policy, whether or not he goes ahead with his promise to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, it is clear – not least from the choice of Scott Pruitt to head the US Environmental Protection Agency – that he intends to ignore it, as indeed both China and India, while pretending to abide by it, are doing.

This is no disaster. Over the past century and a half of industrialisation, it is officially estimated that average global temperature has risen by a mere 1ºC, to which the use of fossil fuels has made a contribution, although how much of a contribution is uncertain. But this is trivial: there are plenty of countries thriving with a temperature well above the global average. But what is far from trivial is the cost of current climate policy (and the UK accounts for less than 2% of global CO2 emissions) to the British economy. A new report by Peter Lilley for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, based entirely on official figures (which probably understate the cost), finds this to be in excess of £300 billion, a burden that falls particularly severely on the poorest and the ‘just about managing’.

With Mr Trump (on this issue, at least) leading the world in a more rational direction, the UK might at last come to its senses on climate policy in 2017.

Will Theresa May invoke article 50 and call a general election in 2017?

By James Kirkup, Telegraph executive editor, politics

After a year like 2016 (and there have been very few years like 2016), any sort of political prediction is probably brave and possibly foolhardy. But with the warning that everything that follows could well be entirely wrong, here goes.

Leading lady: Theresa May will push ahead with Brexit strategies in 2017Credit:
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Getting to that point won’t be easy. She’ll have a couple of nervous days in parliament as a few Labour MPs and the House of Lords demand more details of her plans, but they won’t dare outright obstruction of a prime minister who can claim to be acting for the 17.4 million who voted leave.

Once this is done, what happens? Not much in the short term is the answer. For all the excitement Article 50 will generate in the UK, elsewhere in Europe leaders will have other fish to fry.

Most immediately, EU attention will focus on the French presidential election in May. Assuming that Marine Le Pen doesn’t win – the odds are against her but if she does, Brexit may be academic because the EU may just collapse – the next major EU preoccupation is Angela Merkel’s bid for a fourth term as German chancellor in September.

Any election in these turbulent times is a gamble, and Mrs May is not a gambler

Mrs Merkel is favourite to win again, but forging a coalition could take a month or two. So it will take until almost the end of 2017 for the EU’s leading powers to have permanent leadership in place, which will leave Mrs May waiting for the EU to agree its position for the start of Brexit negotiations.

And the thing Mrs May will not do? Hold a general election. Tories will urge her to cash in on a huge poll lead over Jeremy Corbyn (who will be Labour leader at the end of 2017) to get a clear mandate for Brexit talks. She may even hint she is willing to go to the country.

But it won’t happen. Triggering an election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is too complicated and unpredictable. More to the point, any election in these turbulent times is a gamble, and Mrs May is not a gambler.

What does Donald Trump's presidency mean for global security?

By Con Coughlin, Telegraph defence editor

The key issue in 2017 regarding the global security landscape will be to see how the new Trump administration responds to the various threats facing the US and its allies.

During the presidential election campaign, Donald Trump declared that he would be pursuing an “America First” policy, prompting concerns on both sides of the Atlantic that America would become more isolationist.

These concerns were compounded when Mr Trump also suggested he might end America’s relationship with the Nato alliance, as well as forging a closer relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom many European leaders regard as posing a serious threat to long-term security.

Russian roulette: Trump's relationship with the Kremlin could be cause for concernCredit:
Getty

Since winning the election, though, Mr Trump has been more emollient, and made reassuring noises about continuing to work with the Nato alliance. Moreover, the appointment of leading hawks, such as retired general Michael Flynn as the new national security adviser, suggests the US will provide the type of effective leadership in the western alliance that was lacking during Barack Obama’s eight-year term as president.

Undoubtedly Mr Trump’s first major foreign policy task will be to review the US-led military coalition’s campaign to destroy the terrorist infrastructure that Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has established in Syria and Iraq.

The big question, though, is how closely he will be prepared to work with the Russians; particularly in Syria, where the military support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has received from both Russia and Iran has been crucial to ensuring his regime’s survival.

If Trump ditches the Iran deal, this could prompt a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East

Although Mr Trump expressed his admiration for Mr Putin during the election, John Brennan, the outgoing head of the CIA, has warned the new president about trying to work with the Kremlin, telling him to be wary of Russian promises that had proved to be empty in the past.

Another issue where Mr Trump’s intervention could prove controversial is his promise to rip up Mr Obama’s deal with Iran over its nuclear programme. Under the terms of the deal Mr Obama signed in the summer of 2015, Iran agreed to freeze work on its nuclear weapons programme.

But if Mr Trump does fulfil his pledge to ditch the deal, this could prompt a new nuclear arms race in the Middle East – one that not only has disastrous implications for the region, but for the security of the entire world.